Humor Taboos
This list is always growing, so check it regularly. Don't be discouraged if we put something you wrote in here (there are lots things we wrote that made this list when we later realized they weren't funny).
Disclaimer: There may be hilarious ways to violate each of these rules. However, these are great rules of thumbs (how do you pluralize that?), so we encourage you to master writing within these helpful guidelines first, and then when you become a Groupon Voice Level 7 Sage (you'll know when you get there by the cloak you'll be wearing) you can violate all the conventional wisdom you've learned and murder your father provided the act is just.
- Explaining or calling out the joke (putting it in quotations, parenthesis, adding language that draws attention to the joke, etc.). Let the reader figure out that it's a joke.
- Antagonizing the reader (e.g. "Get fit, fatty!" "Take a shower hippy!," "Eat a burger hipster!"). The problem isn't that it's offensive - it's that it isn't funny.
- Humor that depends on poking fun at archetypes (granola-lovers, etc.)
- Anything blatantly mocking the business (you can do some tongue in cheek stuff, but nothing too aggressive)
Random for the sake of random, and packing in too much random at once. Let your idea be surprising and strange, but not convoluted.
EXAMPLE: When you eat this burger, angels with onion ring halos appear and perform breakdancing routines on a maple-syrup covered twister board.
Overly negative, brutal humor. For example, a quick, playful reference to the apocalypse can be used to great effect, but a long, extended apocalyptic scenario that is funny because of how endlessly depressing and relentless it is, though potentially funny, is likely to create easily avoidable problems for us with vendors & customers.
- Overuse of hyphens: "Rocky's serves up the perfect end-of-the-party-temporarily-putting-off-tomorrow's-inevitable-hangover kind of taco. You know the kind."
- Mullets, Snuggies, midgets (over-used, unfunny humor crutches).
- Zombies, Pirates, Ninjas, Pandas, Unicorns, Bears, Sharks, at least not in the hipster context that usually conjoins these things
- Try to avoid pop-culture references. Even if the idea is funny, the specificity of a celebrity reference usually dampen the humor. Instead, capture the idea with imagery:
>DON'T: This deal doesn’t cover any dye jobs, perms, or Vanilla Ice-style shavings...
>DO: This deal doesn’t cover any dye jobs, perms, or racing stripe shavings...
Writers of our generation for some reason like to indulge in childhood nostalgia by making 80's pop-culture references to things like Alf, skip-n-step, Nintendo, Big League Chew, etc. When these things are referenced in such a way that they're supposed to be funny in and of themselves, it falls flat. If you're not just name dropping them, however, it is possible to use such references:
DO:
DON'T: